Jane is ready to see which pages you might be monitoring? Maybe she thinks you aren’t monitoring the progress of the group as an entire. That may be what she means by “assist”.
I feel it is best to ask about her prior job expertise. It seems like she’s anticipating extra of a micro-managing type, and isn’t seeing that from you, so she’s been stepping up (as a “staff participant”, even!) to offer that.
Or she may be gunning for a middle-management function. How well-fitting are schedules within the staff’s work? Is anybody ever late with work that holds up what different persons are doing as a result of they’ve to attend for that work to be completed? Jane would possibly assume that you just aren’t monitoring everybody’s work since you don’t have time, and that she will be able to present you that she DOES have time (whereas nonetheless getting her work completed), in order that she’s going to look good for a possible promotion to supervisor.
You could possibly handle this by telling her that micro-management is just not your organization’s tradition, and different staff are in a position to carry out their work with out fixed reminders. However this assumes your staff isn’t shedding time to suboptimal scheduling and that she will be able to let go of an previous mindset which will have been worn in over a few years. If she insists micro-managing is critical, you would possibly postpone/reroute her vitality from “attempting to regulate” to “studying the right way to be a supervisor”: when she is aware of the right way to do everybody’s job, she’s going to have the ability to determine the place to direct her consideration.
There’s an previous (possible apocryphal) story a few supervisor working a manufacturing unit the place an important piece of equipment breaks. They name in an skilled, who arrives, takes a have a look at it, swings a wrench, and the machine begins working once more. The skilled says “that’ll be $800”, and the supervisor says “However that solely took you 5 seconds! What you probably did isn’t value wherever close to $800.” So the skilled explains “Anybody can hit that machine with a wrench. I took 4 years of courses studying the right way to know WHERE to hit it with a wrench. That’s what you’re paying me for.”
Clarify to Jane that what you do (as a supervisor) might look easy, but it surely’s truly about understanding precisely the place your consideration – and intervention – is required, which you realize due to expertise doing every part the staff has completed. You may’t rotate her into one other function simply now as a result of then there wouldn’t be sufficient folks to do the work she’s doing proper now, but when she is prepared to quickly tackle the additional accountability of coaching an intern, she could have a possibility to show her management capabilities and ensure the staff is ready to maintain on-schedule whereas she adjusts to a different function. This could present her a route to channel her ambitions in, yet one more productive than she’s at the moment exploring. If she desires to be a pacesetter, however doesn’t wish to tackle the additional tasks you inform her it entails, nicely, she would possibly notice that’s on her and cease attempting to behave like she’s a supervisor.
Or she would possibly go in a distinct route and attempt to begin a union, however I feel it sounds extra like she’d wish to be in middle-management. Testing whether or not she’s prepared to place within the effort and time to get there might reveal not simply whether or not she’s motivated extra by the considered having energy over others, however whether or not (even when her intentions are noble) she’d truly be any good at it.
